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May 7th-9th Severe Weather Episodes


andyhb

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In other news...

 

TORNADO #1  
 
RATING: EF-2  
ESTIMATED PEAK WIND: 130 MPH  
PATH LENGTH /STATUTE/: 8 MILES  
PATH WIDTH /MAXIMUM/: 440 YARDS  
FATALITIES: 0  
INJURIES: 0  
 
START DATE: MAY 07 2016  
START TIME: 551 PM MDT  
START LOCATION: 2 N WRAY  
 
END DATE: MAY 07 2016  
END TIME: 616 PM MDT  
END LOCATION: 10 NNE WRAY  
 
TORNADO PATH WAS ONLY SURVEYED BETWEEN 2 AND 5 MILES NORTH OF  
WRAY ALONG AND JUST EAST OF HIGHWAY 385. TORNADO LIKELY CONTINUED  
WELL NORTH-NORTHEAST OF WRAY BUT LACK OF ROADS PREVENTED FURTHER  
SURVEY. THREE RESIDENCES AND TWO BUSINESSES NORTH OF WRAY WERE  
IMPACTED...MAJORITY OF TRACK WAS OVER OPEN COUNTRY. 

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Yet another in the trail of 10%/hatched tornado busts this year. Hasn't been a single tornado report within the bounds of the 10% hatched.

 

Would think another one might be coming in the D1 for tomorrow.

2016, the year of too early initiation, crappy wind fields, and junky storm modes.

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Disagree in this instance. When you have intense rotation and a funnel cloud I am okay with the extreme wording. Probably would have been beneficial in a circumstance like El Reno where once the couplet tightened you had intense widening and strengthening within seconds

But that isn't what happened. This was no El Reno and there was no indication that it was going to ramp up into something of that magnitude.This is one of many cases of this happening. I remember several "extremely large dangerous" rain shafts in Texas last spring too.

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Ended up sitting with the Mangum storm until its demise just west of Highway 183. It didn't look bad for a while and I was hoping it would become established. Alas it was all left split garbage except the storm that set up from Fredrick to Lawton. Blasted south on 183 and observed an anti-cyclonic wall cloud with inflow band coming in from the west with one of the left splits moving north. Have to admit that was a new experience but alas radar backed it up. Made it into west Lawton the same time as the precip core of right-mover. Lawton's atrocious, hideous, and other 'less appropriate words' of a drainage system meant the whole town went underway within 5 minutes. My only east roads were underwater and I wasn't able to ever get to the storm. Was on 44 north of Elgin when the brief TOG occurred and lets just say I wasn't happy for a good portion of the drive back to OUN. Another grungy, crappy OK setup. I would have gotten the Marlow TOG if not for Lawton's inability to build a darn drainage system. Seriously - they get half an inch of rain and all the roads become impassable. I really dislike that town... 

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Honestly looking at the storm reports across the main threat area... This is an even worse bust than 4/26. Not really the SPC's fault imo. Just frustrating...

 

This season YTD has been pretty much horrific on the Plains, after this debacle. Excepting the magic unicorn Colorado tornadoes on 4/15 and 5/7, there's been virtually nothing to show for several impressive troughs with seasonably rich moisture in place. If you take last week's systems and today's in combination, I'm not sure I've ever seen such a complete dearth of substantial tornadoes in the Plains this time of year from similar systems. All of these setups have been imperfect to varying degrees, but especially in May, flaws on the order of today's typically only serve to reduce the event from an outbreak to scattered tornadoes (one or two still being substantial/significant/long-lived). And from a chaser's point of view, even good structure - which can help compensate for tornado busts like today - has been very scarce.

 

Low level shear in the 21z-23z timeframe was definitely more anemic than forecast from a couple days out. Perhaps there was a gradual downward trend in that regard over the past 24-36 h that a lot of us overlooked, since it was a subtle detail -- the shear near and after 00z was going to be good either way. Shortwave timing must have been just a few hours off.

 

And to rehash a rant of mine I've been posting for years: today is W OK in a nutshell. Right smack in the middle of the U.S. climatological tornado frequency maximum, and it's been 15 years and counting since the last substantial multi-storm dryline tornado event (localized single-storm events have happened, of course, like Elmer last year and 11/7/11). For so many years, every single time W OK is the focus of a solid large-scale dryline setup like this, there's some major failure mode that creeps in. So many busts out there that I can't even keep track any more.

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I honestly cannot think of a plains event the past three years that had the dynamics like today and 4/26 and all the hype to go along with, that actually panned out. I mean we had that surprise day on 5/6 last year, and that surprise November outbreak, but nothing where it was obvious that we could have a big day that actually panned out to be a big day, if I am remembering correctly. From 2014 to 2016 has been trash for the plains imo. Honestly there has not been a legitimate large scale plains outbreak since 2012. The end of May in 2013 saw a few nice days, one of which resulted in the May 20 Moore EF-5 tornado, and another in the May 31 El Reno EF-3 (really EF-5), but none of those days were really tornado outbreaks...

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Maybe its just my approach, but to be frank after today I would be very hesitant on pulling anything with regards to "significant tornadoes" on anything beyond the D1 outlook if I were in the shoes of an SPC forecaster. Sure there are some days where its painfully obvious that it's going to be a significant tornado outbreak more than 24 hours out (those days are rather few and far between, I might add), but on more borderline days like today it's simply going to harm the public's perception of the SPC and NWS if they keep putting out stronger wording before having to scale back as we draw into D1. If there are question marks in play, I simply fail to see the sense in going for stronger wording before those question marks sort themselves out.

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Maybe its just my approach, but to be frank after today I would be very hesitant on pulling anything with regards to "significant tornadoes" on anything beyond the D1 outlook if I were in the shoes of an SPC forecaster. Sure there are some days where its painfully obvious that it's going to be a significant tornado outbreak more than 24 hours out (those days are rather few and far between, I might add), but on more borderline days like today it's simply going to harm the public's perception of the SPC and NWS if they keep putting out stronger wording before having to scale back as we draw into D1. If there are question marks in play, I simply fail to see the sense in going for stronger wording before those question marks sort themselves out.

 

Keep in mind that SPC Convective Outlooks are not really targeted at the public. As such, I would argue their wording over the past 48 hours has been entirely appropriate for the perceived threat level at the time. The outlooks have quantitative probabilities, and the discussions more or less have to match those probabilities. So last night when the first SWODY1 was pushed out, a 10% hatched tornado area along the dryline looked very reasonable. And by including that hatched area, it follows that the discussion should address the potential for at least isolated strong tornadoes.

 

Using phrases like "tornado outbreak" from more than 24-48 h out, especially when substantial uncertainties remain, might be more debatable. But I don't think it's realistic at all to withhold mention of significant tornadoes on the D1/D2 outlooks just because there are some lingering questions.

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Keep in mind that SPC Convective Outlooks are not really targeted at the public. As such, I would argue their wording over the past 48 hours has been entirely appropriate for the perceived threat level at the time. The outlooks have quantitative probabilities, and the discussions more or less have to match those probabilities. So last night when the first SWODY1 was pushed out, a 10% hatched tornado area along the dryline looked very reasonable. And by including that hatched area, it follows that the discussion should address the potential for at least isolated strong tornadoes.

 

Using phrases like "tornado outbreak" from more than 24-48 h out, especially when substantial uncertainties remain, might be more debatable. But I don't think it's realistic at all to withhold mention of significant tornadoes on the D1/D2 outlooks just because there are some lingering questions.

 

It could just be recency bias on my part seeing as more or less every setup since the late February outbreak and 4/15 has busted to some degree or another. Not to mention my approach when armchair forecasting is to more or less focus on the question marks moreso than the actual potential until they sort themselves out. HUN, the local NWS office for MBY, seems to use that approach in their AFD's so maybe that rubs off on me some. 

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The Lawton cell was absolutely gorgeous before it crossed 44 about 20 minutes west of Geronimo. Kicking myself that I didn't stop to take pictures being too concentrated on getting to my east-bound road target...which ended up being too far south anyways. Got some video of a not-so-great wall cloud, then got a flat tire while re-positioning east. Not a great chase.

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The Lawton cell was absolutely gorgeous before it crossed 44 about 20 minutes west of Geronimo. Kicking myself that I didn't stop to take pictures being too concentrated on getting to my east-bound road target...which ended up being too far south anyways. Got some video of a not-so-great wall cloud, then got a flat tire while re-positioning east. Not a great chase.

So disappointed in myself for not getting on this storm from the start, given that my initial target of Altus turned out to be pretty good. The Mangum and Blair storms looked better initially, but quickly crapped out, so I eventually made a run for the Lawton storm from Roosevelt. Got within a few miles of it in Geronimo, but from there the road network got pretty dire and I lost it about 10 minutes before the tornado. Also, was in catch-up mode just about the whole time so didn't get any good pictures either. Just not great.

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